Health Indicator Report of Fall Injury (Unintentional)

Why Is This Important?

Falls are a leading cause of injury death for Utahns aged 65 and older. Additionally, in Utah, unintentional fall-related inpatient hospital charges for all ages totaled more than $185 million in 2014.

Chart

Data Table

Data Notes

Notes

ICD-9 codes include E880-E886.9 and E888. Age-adjusted to the U.S. 2000 standard population.
Prior to 2015 San Juan County was part of the Southeast Local Health District. In 2015 the San Juan County Local Health District was formed. Data reported are for all years using the current boundaries.

Numerator

Denominator

Health Objectives and Targets

Healthy People Objective IVP-23.2:

Prevent an increase in fall-related deaths among adults aged 65 years and olderU.S. Target: 47.0 deaths per 100,000 population

Current Outlook

How Are We Doing?

Unintentional falls caused 626 unintentional fall-related deaths in Utah from 2015-2017; almost 80% (500/626) of deaths were among Utahns aged 65 and older.
Between 2012 and 2014, females aged 65 and older had a significantly higher rate of hospitalizations due to unintentional falls (143 per 10,000 population) than males aged 65 and older (83.8 per 10,000 population).
Between 1992-2014, urban counties had consistently higher rates of unintentional fall hospitalizations than rural and frontier counties.

Health Improvement

What Is Being Done?

The Utah Department of Health Violence and Injury Prevention Program (VIPP) receives funding from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to collect traumatic brain injury surveillance data, including a falls-specific data module, for the state of Utah. This is done through review of hospital discharge data, vital statistics data, and hospital records abstractions.
Local health departments and other community-based agencies have implemented evidence-based falls prevention programs, such as the Stepping On program and Matter of Balance program. These programs work to increase strength and balance, reduce fall hazards in the home, and build self-efficacy among participants to reduce the fear of falling. National research shows the programs reduce falls among participants. The classes are free to the public.
The Utah Falls Prevention Coalition was established by the VIPP in 2011 with the purpose of developing a strategic, statewide response to Utah's growing rate of falls among older adults in the state. Until this time, there had been no single, statewide response to address this public health problem in Utah. Many organizations were implementing falls prevention activities but resources and activities were scattered and disconjointed when looked at from a public health perspective. The Coalition has three main purposes: 1) bring together partners who have an interest in falls prevention among older adults, 2) develop goals and strategies on falls prevention among older adults to include in the Utah Violence and Injury Plan, and 3) ready the state for future funding opportunities on falls prevention.

Available Services

Stepping On classes - Contact your local health department or senior center for information on available classes[[br]]
[https://wihealthyaging.org/stepping-on]

Health Program Information

The Violence and Injury Prevention Program (VIPP) is a trusted and comprehensive resource for data related to violence and injury. Through education, this information helps promote partnerships and programs to prevent injuries and improve public health. VIPP goals are to a) focus prevention efforts on reducing intentional and unintentional injury, b) conduct education aimed at increasing awareness and changing behaviors that contribute to the occurrence of injury, c) strengthen local health department capacity to conduct local injury prevention programs, d) promote legislation, policy changes, and enforcement that will reduce injury hazards and increase safe behaviors, e) collaborate with private and public partners, and f) improve the Utah Department of Health capacity to collect mortality and morbidity data from multiple sources and conduct injury epidemiology for use in prevention planning, implementation, and evaluation.

Utah DOH

Legal

Other

The information published on this
website may be reproduced without permission. Please use the following
citation: "Retrieved Fri, 22 February 2019
from the Utah Department of Health, Indicator-Based
Information System for Public Health Web site: http://ibis.health.utah.gov"

Page Content Updated: Tue, 20 Nov 2018 12:32:50 MST

The information provided above is from the Department of Health's Center for
Health Data IBIS-PH web site (http://ibis.health.state.gov). The information published
on this website may be reproduced without permission. Please use the following citation:
"
Retrieved
Fri, 22 February 2019 7:28:22
from Department of Health, Center for Health Data, Indicator-Based Information
System for Public Health Web site: http://ibis.health.state.gov
".